Copyright by Underwood and Underwood.CONFISCATED ARMS AND AMMUNITIONThe revolvers and rifles were taken from both mine guards and strikers
The West Virginia operators appealed to the Interstate Commerce Commission for an investigation, and an order suspending the rate was granted. Then John W. Boilleau, a big operator in Pennsylvania, demanded a reduction of 50 or 55 cents a ton from the Pittsburgh district, further complicating the situation. Early last year, the Interstate Commerce Commission handed down a decision reducing the rate from the Pittsburgh district 10 cents and held that the Chesapeake and Ohio and the Kanawha and Michigan rates should remain as they had been but that the Norfolk and Western rate might be increased. This decision resulted in increasing the differential in favor of Pittsburgh to 19 cents.
With this handicap in freight rates, the operators on Paint and Cabin creeks say that it is impossible for them to pay the union scale and submit to union conditions and keep going. It is a fact that although the average price of coal in West Virginia for 1911 was a cent above the price in 1910, many coal companies failed. Some mines have been operated by receivers while others have been closed down on the ground that coal cannot be produced at the mouth of the mines and put on the cars at the price it brings in the market. Others are just about coming out even while some are making money.
Profits from Mine or Men?
The strikers answer by charging that the losses and difficulties incident to competition are many of them paper losses and paper difficulties, that the mines would pay well under union conditions and rates of pay if the mines were not working on an inflated capitalization and were not endeavoring to earn money on a lot of watered stock.
In one of the talks which I had with Neil Robinson, secretary of the West Virginia Mining Association, he went into the cost of production and told of the efforts of the Pittsburgh operators to shut the West Virginia coals out of the lake trade. He produced the calculations of G. W. Schleuderberg, general manager of the Pittsburgh Coal Company, which were given in the lake rate cases before the Interstate Commerce Commission, showing that the average cost of production in 52 mines, including general office expenses, depreciation, royalty, fuel, supplies, and labor, was 99.09 cents per ton of coal on cars.
As against this, he showed a generalized statement, which he said was based on actual working conditions in the Kanawha splint coal mines indicating a cost of 99.11 cents on cars, a difference of two hundredths of a cent in favor of the Pittsburgh operators.
The Schleuderberg figures showed a total laborcost of 72.16 cents a ton while Mr. Robinson's figures showed for the Kanawha fields a labor cost of 65.66 cents a ton, a difference in favor of the Kanawha fields of 6.5 cents, and if superintendence and certain other costs be included, a cost of 63.78 cents, which is a per ton difference in favor of the Kanawha fields of 3.38 cents. This would more than cover the increase asked by the miners which is half of the Cleveland compromise scale or approximately 2-1/2 cents a ton.
Courtesy of the Coal AgeON GUARDA Cabin Creek rifle-woman before her tent.
Of course, there is the railroad differential in favor of Pittsburgh to be considered. In spite of the differential of 9 cents against the West Virginia field, which existed up to the time of the settlement of the lake trade cases by the Interstate Commerce Commission, the West Virginia operators shipped in 1910 to lake ports more than six million tons of coal, a growth of over four million tons since 1906; or 125 per cent and even with the differential spread to 19 cents, they are shipping coal as rapidly as they can mine it.
The explanation of the Kanawa Valley miners is that in their efforts to capture the Lake Trade the West Virginia operators in competing with the Pittsburgh district operators have been selling coal at less than cost and making their profits out of their men.
The miners told me that ever since the fight began their condition has been becoming harder and harder to bear. One of the men, answering my statement that the operators said they were barely meeting expenses said: "Damn it, I know there is no money in coal at 80 cents at the tipple; any fool knows that, but by God, they've got no right to take it out of us."
And that in my judgment is about the truth of the situation. Or, as Neil Robinson explained to me in all seriousness: "Labor is simply a pawn in the game."
Yet the game has cost the state, the operators and the miners millions of dollars and many lives, has caused untold hardship to women and their children, has engendered a bitterness that a generation in time will not heal and hatreds that will last a lifetime.
In making that statement, I am convinced that Mr. Robinson did not know how it would sound to one who puts the well-being of men, women and children above the necessity of capital for dividends. He was simply stating a business fact. I had several talks with him in the course of my stay in the mine region and found him a cultivated, courteous man. I think I got his point of view which coincides with that of the operators generally. They seem to look upon labor as material, to be bought as cheaply as possible and to be utilized in the manner which will be most profitable to the mine investments.
Whenever I went in to see him to discuss the situation he immediately produced account books, and books of statistics and began giving me figures. The whole case of the operators, he seemed to think, could be shown by the books and the balance sheet. He told me of tonnage, cost of production, railroad freight rates, yield on investment, the yield of competitive fields and the cost of operation in those fields, capitalization and rates of dividends. But of the human side, he had substantially nothing to say. Of the outrages of the miners—and they have been numerous—he spoke with bitterness, but of the outrages committed upon them he was silent.
Of course, figures such as Mr. Robinson produced are important but they are not everything. The trouble is that the operators do not seem to be able to see beyond them into those desolate little cabins under the everlasting hills, to the rights of men, to the causes that make for anarchy—that have made for anarchy, in this very region.
The State at Stake
It is hard to tell just how many men have been out in recent months. Five thousand would be a fair estimate. And remarkable as it is, these men have been able to hold out through a winter—and winters are severe in those West Virginia mountains—and they enter the spring and the long season, when cold does not fight them from the ranks of their opponents, full of cheer and determined to continue the industrial war in which they have engaged.
It must be remembered that this fight is not simply one between miners and operators on Paint and Cabin Creeks. It is localized there, but every miner and every operator in the state is involved more or less directly. It is really a fight for the unionizing of the entire coal fields of West Virginia, now largely non union.
If the operators stamp out the effort to restore unionism on Paint and Cabin Creeks and prevent its going further than it has already gone on Coal River it will mean the checkmating of unionism in the coal fields of the state. Fights will be made, one after another, in places where the United Mine Workers have organizations and they will be broken up as they were broken up on Cabin Creek ten years ago. Once broken, they will not be permitted to be formed again.
If, on the other hand, the miners win, their organization will be pushed first into one field, then into another, until the whole state shall have been unionized. It will take them years to do this. This explains the extreme bitterness of the present fight, each side practically staking its all on this one throw. Of course, the operators do not admit that they are battling to crush out unionism in the state and the officials of the mine workers' organization do not talk much about extending the fight to other fields if they win in this. That is their purpose, nevertheless.
The miners are receiving assistance from other operators in non-union parts of the state. All the resources of the United Mine Workers of America are being thrown behind the miners. As explained to me by perhaps the most prominent man in the organization a few days ago, there is now no big fight on hand anywhere else in the country, and there has been none for a year. This has enabled the mine workers to collect a big fund and they are still collecting. The organization's war chest is kept in good shape by contributions from every mining district in the nation and all this will be poured into the Kanawha field if necessary. In addition to this, the miners again have the sympathy, if not the active co-operation, of the operators in the Pennsylvania, Illinois and Ohio fields where the union scale is paid.
In fact, the operators in the fields which are organized look upon their brothers who have been able to prevent the union getting a hold in their operations very much as the union laborer looks upon the non-union laborer, although the operator is not so frank in expressing his opinion. He is perfectly willing to upset the labor conditions in his competitors' operations and aid the laborers in making their fights. And the operator in the unorganized field is perfectly willing to see his competitors' fields organized to the limit.
The country in which this war between the miners and the coal companies is taking place is as wild as any that lies out of doors. Cabin Creek Junction is sixteen miles east of Charleston and Paint Creek Junction is seven miles further east. On Cabin Creek the railroad runs south along the bed of the creek sixteen miles to Kayford while on Paint Creek the road extends for twenty-two miles. These creeks are little streams, ordinarily, which sometimes reach the proportions of torrents, flowing along the bases of the mountains. The elevation of the creek beds above tide ranges from 800 to 1,000 feet, while the tops of the hills which rise abruptly on both sides of each creek are from 1,000 to 1,500 feet higher. The sides of these hills are so steep that only an experienced mountaineer can climb them, yet here and there near the creek beds the miners have raised little patches of corn and vegetables.
MOTHER JONES
The workable veins of coal lie high up on the sides of these hills, and from each mine mouth a track leads to the coal tipple below from which the coal is dumped from the mine cars to the cars of the railroad which runs beneath the tipple. Here and there at the base of either of these ravines is a narrow strip of flat land, and on these flats, the mining villages are located. At places the bottom of the ravine is so narrow that there is not room for the railroad track, the creek bed and the county road, so the road runs along the bed of the creek and is impassable at times of high water and oftentimes in the winter.
It is estimated that before the strike began, there were approximately 10,000 men, women and children living along Cabin Creek and somewhat more than half that number along Paint Creek. A train runs up each creek in the morning and there is another in the afternoon and if you happen to miss the afternoon train out there is no way out except to walk, and walking is very difficult in that country.
MINERS' HOMES LEASED FROM MINE OWNERSCourtesy of the New York Sun
For that reason little real news of the exact condition of affairs has reached the outside world. Newspaper men are decidedly unwelcome along the creeks; that is, their presence is distasteful to the mine owners. Few strangers had been allowed to enter the creeks for a long time prior to the entry of the militia last summer, without explaining their business to some man, and usually a man with a gun. Ordinarily a stranger would not get beyond the junction of the main line and the branch road. If the explanation of his business did not happen to be satisfactory, he was told to get out. If he demurred or showed a disposition to argue he was frequently beaten up. If he got up the line, his chances of getting beaten up were largely increased. One labor organizer told me that a couple of years ago he was pulled off a train and kicked into insensibility by the mine guards and when he recovered was made to "walk the creek" in water up to his waist because he had gone up Cabin Creek to see what the labor conditions were.
The Mine Guards
These mine guards are an institution all along the creeks in the non-union sections of the state. They are as a rule supplied by the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency of Roanoke and Bluefield. It is said the total number in the mining regions of West Virginia reaches well up to 2,500. Ordinarily they are recruited from the country towns of Virginia and West Virginia, preferably the towns in the hill country, and frequently have been the "bad men" of the towns from which they came. And these towns have produced some pretty hard characters. The ruffian of the West Virginia town would not take off his hat to the desperado of the wildest town of the wildest west.
These Baldwin guards who are engaged by the mining companies to do their "rough work" take the place of the Pinkertons who formerly were used for such work by the coal companies. Since the Homestead strike in the steel mills years ago when the Pinkertons fired into the strikers and killed a number of them, this class of business has gradually drifted away from the Pinkertons and much of it has been acquired by the Baldwin-Felts agency.
In explanation of the employment of these guards, the operators say that their property must be guarded, that the state does not give them sufficient protection. Men who do service as mine guards cannot be expected to be "ladylike." They deal with desperate characters and are constantly in peril. The guards act on the principle that they must strike first if they are to strike at all, and evidence shows that they have not the slightest hesitancy about striking first. The operators also say that it is necessary to require explanations of strangers in order to keep out labor agitators and to prevent the miners from being annoyed and threatened by them.
No class of men on earth are more cordially hated by the miners than these same mine guards who are engaged to "protect" them from annoyance by outsiders. Before the state troops went into the region and took their rifles away from them, the mine guards went about everywhere, gun in hand, searching trains, halting strangers, ejecting undesirables, turning miners out of their houses and doing whatever "rough work" the companies felt they needed to have done. Stories of their brutality are told on every hand along the creeks. Some are unquestionably exaggerated, but the truth of many can be proved and has been proved.
In spite of the work they do some of these Baldwin men seem to be decent enough chaps to those who are not "undesirable," and they are, for the most part, intelligent. But they are in the mines for a definite purpose. They understand what that purpose is and they have no hesitancy about "delivering the goods." They seem to have no illusions about their work. It pays well and if brutality is required, why, brutality "goes." Whenever possible they are clothed with some semblance of the authority of the law, either by being sworn in as railroad detectives, as constables or deputy sheriffs.
But for all that a number have been indicted for offenses ranging from common assault to murder. In every case, however, bail has been ready and it is rare that charges against them have been brought to trial. Some of the assault cases in which they have figured have been of great brutality, yet rarely has any serious trouble resulted for the guards. They go about their work in a purely impersonal way. If a worker becomes too inquisitive, if he shows too much independence, or complains too much about his condition, he is beaten up some night as he passes under a coal tipple, but the man who does the beating has no feeling against him personally; it is simply a matter of business to him.
Just what the services of the guards cost the coal companies is difficult to learn. The companies contract with the Baldwin-Felts agency for them and the sum they pay is kept a secret. It is generally understood that the guards get about $5 a day, or between $100 and $125 a month. A man in the mines who knows one of them intimately told me he "picked up his gun" for $105 a month. When a man joins the Baldwins he "picks up his gun," and that stampshim forevermore with his former associates if they were of the laboring class as an enemy and a man who has turned his back on his class and his kind.
Courtesy of the United Mine Workers' JournalA GROUP OF STRIKERS' CHILDREN
Unless the miners are beaten in this fight, and utterly and completely beaten, there will never be a settlement of the difficulty here until the mine guards are driven from the region. "The mine guards must go," is the slogan of the striking miner everywhere. His going is of more importance than an increase in pay. There will be no lasting peace in the region until they are gone. All over the state when the situation in the Kanawha valley comes up for discussion you are told that the mine guards are at the bottom of the trouble. They are the Ishmaelites of the coal regions for their hands are supposed to be against every miner, and every miner's hand is raised against them. They go about in constant peril—they are paid to face danger and they face it all the time. But they are afraid, for they never know when they may get a charge of buckshot or a bullet from an old Springfield army rifle that will make a hole in a man's body big enough for you to put your fist in. A number of guards have been killed since the trouble began, and it is generally understood that some of these were buried by their fellows and nothing said about it, there being a disposition down in the mines not to let the other side know when either side scores and gets a man.
Beginning of Hostilities
Preparations for the warfare, which began in April of last year, had been going on for months before the actual opening of hostilities. The miners on Paint Creek began buying old Springfield rifles which the government had discarded and which were offered in quantities by junk dealers and department stores in Charleston. There had been rumors of trouble, and the Paint Creek miners who were organized had received intimations that Cabin Creek conditions would be established in their operations. There had been no mine guards on Paint Creek for they are seldom seen in union operations. The miners had received information that the operators would not sign the scale for the new year but would repudiate the union and bring in the guards.
Their information proved correct. When the Kanawha Operators' Association met to consider the scale, the Paint Creek operators declined to sign it and withdrew from the association. The miners struck and the guards appeared over night. A big fight took place at Mucklow when the first blood was spilled in the trouble. It has been spilled in quantities since with more or less regularity.
The companies immediately prepared for a long fight. Miners were evicted from their homes and many of them have since been living in tents furnished by the United Mine Workers. Machine guns were imported and mounted in concrete fortifications that were hurriedly built on the roofs of the company stores and mounted in positions of vantage in the hills. Whisky, cartridges, rifles and machine gun ammunition were brought in in large quantities.
The strike spread at once to Cabin Creek and from the beginning the warfare has been more serious on Cabin Creek than it has been on Paint Creek. More machine guns were established on Cabin Creek than had been planted in Paint Creek. The situation grew so threatening that Governor Glasscock ordered out the militia early last August at the solicitation of the mine owners. By that time almost every man on Cabin Creek had his rifle and ammunition, hidden but where he could get at it without trouble. For the most part the arms were smuggled in over the hills. The mine owners informed Governor Glasscock that the miners were armed and were threatening to wipe out the mine guards, one of the guards, William Stringer, having been slain in a most brutal manner. The miners did not ask for protection, saying they could protect themselves. It is generally believed that they were waiting for some particularly bad move on the part of the guards, when they proposed to exterminate them if possible. The mine owners expected that when the troops came they would disarm the miners but allow the guards to retain their rifles, in other words, and to put it very plainly, they expected that the militia would be used as an additional force against the miners. But when the troops began disarming the guards as well as the miners they protested most vigorously. But for every rifle taken away from a guard in the early days of the trouble, dozens of new ones were brought in.
Courtesy of the United Mine Workers' JournalA TENT VILLAGE OF STRIKERSThe deserted town is in the background
Martial Law
Governor Glasscock's attitude pleased neither the operators nor the strikers. The miners at the outset wanted him to proclaim martial law, to search the whole place, run out the guards, take their arms away from them and take the machine guns out of the improvised forts. They received the soldiers with open arms—no set of soldiers ever went into a strike region and received a heartier welcome. In the presence of the troops, the guards had no terrors for the miners, and even the children were unafraid.
When martial law was really proclaimed, however, the strikers did not like it. The law was enforced with vigor and a number of the strikers were put in prison for violating the law against unlawful assemblages. The shoe had begun to pinch and it pinched pretty hard before the soldiers were withdrawn. It was a mistake to take away the troops before the strike had been definitely settled. It would have cost the state a good deal to have retained them after things quieted down, but if a comparatively small force had been kept, it is hardly likely that the recent trouble would have occurred, and it would not have been necessary to send the soldiers back and proclaim martial law a second time. Then many lives would have been saved.
The trouble that followed the withdrawal of the troops could have been, it seems, foreseen by almost any one. One of the miners said when I was in the mines:
"Hell is going to break loose here as soon as the troops are recalled unless the mine guards go out at the same time. They have it in for us and we have it in for them. As soon as the troops go out, we fellows who have been working to unionize this region are going to catch it. But when they start something the fun will begin."If you want to see some hot doings just wait around until the troops go. Conditions such as prevail here are a disgrace. The like of them does not prevail in any civilized country on the globe. And we are not going to stand them any longer. I have never had to kill a man and hope never to be compelled to kill one, but I would kill a dozen of these guards as I would kill so many rats if they should attempt to lord it over us as they have been accustomed to do. And I would do it with a perfectly clear conscience."
"Hell is going to break loose here as soon as the troops are recalled unless the mine guards go out at the same time. They have it in for us and we have it in for them. As soon as the troops go out, we fellows who have been working to unionize this region are going to catch it. But when they start something the fun will begin.
"If you want to see some hot doings just wait around until the troops go. Conditions such as prevail here are a disgrace. The like of them does not prevail in any civilized country on the globe. And we are not going to stand them any longer. I have never had to kill a man and hope never to be compelled to kill one, but I would kill a dozen of these guards as I would kill so many rats if they should attempt to lord it over us as they have been accustomed to do. And I would do it with a perfectly clear conscience."
The man who made this statement was killed in one of the recent fights in the valley. I saw his name in the list of the dead.
One of the things that give the coal operators such complete control of the men who work forthem is the ownership of great tracts of land. Everywhere you are confronted with a notice that you are on private property.
Landlordism
Because the West Virginia mining villages are nearly all on private property, the operators owning the highways as well as the houses of the miners, they can control their going and coming and determine who may or may not visit them and talk with them. It is idle to say that the men can come and go as they please, as the operators claim. Each individual among them has the right to go from his home to the mine and back again and to travel on the county road, which is merely an excuse for a highway. But he has not therightto go from his own home to that of a fellow workman nor has his wife and children. When they do so, it is by the sufferance of the mine owner, unless they go by the county road and then half the houses cannot be reached. It is idle to say that this power is not exercised by the operators. It is. I have seen it exercised, and this very fact contains a serious menace to the country. I talked it over one day with Governor Glasscock in the early days of the trouble.
"How can it be remedied?" he asked. "The whole situation bristles with problems like this. In this case you are up against a man's constitutional right to control his property as he sees fit and to keep trespassers off it."
Such a situation offers a serious problem in government. Take Cabin Creek alone, with its branches to Kayford and Decota. There are more than twenty square miles of territory in which live ordinarily about 12,000 persons. In all that territory there is scarcely a place in which a man may go without being under surveillance, and except at the little "free" or incorporated town of Eskdale, hardly a house into which a friend may be invited for a drink of water except by the grace of the coal companies.
The miners say that such a condition is un-American. They want it solved and they do not care how it is to be solved. While this matter is not put in the list of their demands, it is one of their serious grievances. Here are the things they are demanding:
Abolition of the mine guard system.A reform in the system of docking.The employment of check-weighmen on the tipples to represent the miners and to be paid by the miners. The law provides for these check-weighmen, but this law is ignored by the coal companies.Permission for the men to trade where they please without discrimination against them for so doing.The payment of wages in cash every two weeks and not in script or credit cards.Improved sanitary conditions, with the requirement that the companies remove garbage and keep the houses in condition.Payment for mining coal on the basis of the short ton on which the coal is sold and not on the basis of the long ton, on which it is at present mined.Rentals of houses based on a fair return on their cost with allowance for upkeep and electric lights on the same basis.The nine hour day—the men now work ten hours.Recognition of the union. This implies, in the bituminous districts of the middle West, the check-off system by which the companies deduct from the pay envelopes of individual miners not only the charges for powder, rent, medical attention, store accounts, etc., but also for union dues which are turned over to the union treasuries direct. This method of recognizing the union has been most vigorously opposed by the operators in the anthracite district.An increase in pay. This last the miners regard as the least vital of all their demands as a present issue.
Abolition of the mine guard system.
A reform in the system of docking.
The employment of check-weighmen on the tipples to represent the miners and to be paid by the miners. The law provides for these check-weighmen, but this law is ignored by the coal companies.
Permission for the men to trade where they please without discrimination against them for so doing.
The payment of wages in cash every two weeks and not in script or credit cards.
Improved sanitary conditions, with the requirement that the companies remove garbage and keep the houses in condition.
Payment for mining coal on the basis of the short ton on which the coal is sold and not on the basis of the long ton, on which it is at present mined.
Rentals of houses based on a fair return on their cost with allowance for upkeep and electric lights on the same basis.
The nine hour day—the men now work ten hours.
Recognition of the union. This implies, in the bituminous districts of the middle West, the check-off system by which the companies deduct from the pay envelopes of individual miners not only the charges for powder, rent, medical attention, store accounts, etc., but also for union dues which are turned over to the union treasuries direct. This method of recognizing the union has been most vigorously opposed by the operators in the anthracite district.
An increase in pay. This last the miners regard as the least vital of all their demands as a present issue.
Charges as to Peonage
It has been charged that a condition of peonage exists in some of the mining districts of the state. This is a subject on which the operators are very sensitive. They deny vehemently that such a thing is possible.
Peonage, as it is usually understood, means compelling men to work under duress until debts they may owe are paid. It is a violation of state and federal laws.
Men who come into the mines usually have little or no money. Sometimes their transportation into the mines is paid and they are charged with the cost of it on the books of the companies employing them. They are given a cabin to live in and if they have no money when they start and seem to want to go to work in good faith they are given credit for small amounts at the company stores. Accordingly, unless the miner is an unusually thrifty fellow, he is usually in debt at the start.
Miners have told me that in the Cabin Creek region they are paid only once a month, but when they start in, they are not paid any cash for sixty days, the first month's pay being held back. In the meantime, however, after they have earned sufficient money to pay the rent and other charges in connection with their cabins, their school tax, burial tax of twenty-five cents a month, their assessment for the maintenance of the mine physician, and sometimes an item for "protection" which is an assessment for the pay of the mine guards they will, "on application" be given a "script card" entitling them to purchase from the company store goods to the amount indicated on the card. On the edges of the card are figures and the amounts purchased are punched out very much as the waiters in a quick lunch restaurant punch out the amount of a customers order on his check.
Courtesy of the New York SunSOLDIERS IN CAMP AT CABIN CREEK JUNCTION
These script cards will not, it is said, be given to a miner for the total amount which stands to his credit on the books of the mine company, but is usually for $2 or $3 if the man has that amount due him after deductions are made for rent in advance and other charges. If a man is very anxious however, to have some cash, a clerk in the store, will, it is said, discount his script card, charging him 25 per cent.
For the first two months, then, the miner, who starts out in debt, has to get everything he needs from the company stores. The prices at these stores are high, much higher than the miner would have to pay elsewhere for exactly the same grade of stuff. For the most part, the grade of goods sold at the company stores is much higher than is usually purchased by laboring men and their wives when they buy where they please. Here are some of the prices I found prevailing at stores along Cabin Creek:
Eggs 35 cents a dozen; "white bacon," pure fat and popularly known as "sow belly" 18 cents a pound; smoked bacon 22 cents a pound; white sugar 20 cents for a two pound bag; lard 15 cents a pound; brown sugar 15 cents a pound; coffee 30 cents a pound; tomatoes 15 cents a can; peas 15 cents a can; corn two cans for 25 cents; cheese 30 cents a pound; bread 5 cents a loaf; flour $7 a barrel, and salt 5 cents for a two pound bag. Salt is not sold in bulk.
Eggs 35 cents a dozen; "white bacon," pure fat and popularly known as "sow belly" 18 cents a pound; smoked bacon 22 cents a pound; white sugar 20 cents for a two pound bag; lard 15 cents a pound; brown sugar 15 cents a pound; coffee 30 cents a pound; tomatoes 15 cents a can; peas 15 cents a can; corn two cans for 25 cents; cheese 30 cents a pound; bread 5 cents a loaf; flour $7 a barrel, and salt 5 cents for a two pound bag. Salt is not sold in bulk.
Compelled to buy at high prices, it can be readily seen that a man cannot save much money, although it is a fact that a few of the very thrifty ones have rather respectable bank accounts. So when the average fellow starts out in debt, he usually stays in debt. His work is hard and he eats heartily when he can. Then the miners' wives have never been taught how to make much out of little or to conserve their resources, so there is naturally much waste in cooking, much is spoiled and much is poorly prepared.
All this tends to keep the man in debt. At the end of his two month's work he may have couple of dollars coming to him or he may be still in debt and if he is in his house a day over the first of the month, rent in advance is charged against the first money he earns even though he and his family may be in need of food. Sometimes he does not get any cash for months, and you have to have cash to get out of the mines for the railroads will not permit the miners and their families to travel without paying fare.
Most of these people have no one outside on whom they may call for help in leaving the district, and without money, they must stay in the mines and work. Heretofore their best means of getting out was to develop strong union tendencies and to talk about the necessity of organizing. Then, if they were not beaten up, their fare was sometimes paid, and their furniture and families moved to some other point. Once out, however, it would be unpleasant for them to try to get back.
A point is made by the operators that they have offered to pay the fares of any of their men and of their families, including transportation charges on their household goods, to Charleston or to fields operating under union conditions. It is a fact that such offers have been made and because the miners did not avail themselves of the offer, it is cited against them as unreasonable, and that they did not care so much about bettering their condition as about harassing the operators.
As a matter of fact the men do not care to leave the region. They are engaged in a fight to unionize it and are as anxious to succeed as are the operators to prevent them from doing so. "Stay where you are and unionize your district but do not crowd into organized operations," is the advice given by the union organizers. That is why the unions in the other districts are supporting the strikers and have been doing so for a year.
The Glasscock Commission
Last summer after the mine companies refused point blank to be a party to the appointment of a commission by the governor for the investigation of the situation in the mines, Governor Glasscock appointed one anyway. Bishop Donahue, the Catholic bishop of Wheeling, S. L. Walker, and Fred O. Blue were appointed as commissioners. Extracts from the report of this commission are interesting:
"From the cloud of witnesses and mass of testimony figuring in the hearings, there emerges clearly and unmistakably the fact that these guards [the mine guards referred to heretofore] recklessly and flagrantly violated in respect to the miners on Paint Creek and Cabin Creek, the rights guaranteed by natural justice and the constitution to every citizen howsoever lowly his condition and state.... Many crimes and outrages laid to their charge were found upon careful sifting to have no foundation in fact, but the denial of the right of peaceable assembly and of freedom of speech, many and grievous assaults on unarmed miners show that their main purpose was to overawe the miners and their adherents and, if necessary to beat and cudgel them into submission. We find that the system employed was vicious, strife prompting and un-American. No man, worthy of the name, likes to be guarded by others, armed with black jacks, revolvers and Winchesters whilst he is endeavoring to earn his daily bread.... We are unanimously of the opinion that the guard system as at present constituted should be abolished forthwith."
"From the cloud of witnesses and mass of testimony figuring in the hearings, there emerges clearly and unmistakably the fact that these guards [the mine guards referred to heretofore] recklessly and flagrantly violated in respect to the miners on Paint Creek and Cabin Creek, the rights guaranteed by natural justice and the constitution to every citizen howsoever lowly his condition and state.... Many crimes and outrages laid to their charge were found upon careful sifting to have no foundation in fact, but the denial of the right of peaceable assembly and of freedom of speech, many and grievous assaults on unarmed miners show that their main purpose was to overawe the miners and their adherents and, if necessary to beat and cudgel them into submission. We find that the system employed was vicious, strife prompting and un-American. No man, worthy of the name, likes to be guarded by others, armed with black jacks, revolvers and Winchesters whilst he is endeavoring to earn his daily bread.... We are unanimously of the opinion that the guard system as at present constituted should be abolished forthwith."
The commission also found that the company stores overcharged the miners, that the system of docking was unfair to the miner, and that a system of blacklisting of miners prevailed.
On the other hand the commission found that in a general way, the miners in the Paint and Cabin Creek districts were fairly well off, that their wages were above the average prevailing in the organized fields, that their cabins were above the average, and that the rent, while "slightly excessive" was not exorbitant, and that the sanitation was "as good as can be expected." On the question of wages, the commission found that the annual wage of miners in West Virginia for the years 1905-1911 was $554.26 while the average annual wage of miners on Paint and Cabin Creeks "is from $600 to $700." It will be noticed that in the first instance a definite, fixed figure is given for the average. In the other the statement is a general one "between $600 and $700."
The statement is also made that "a minute examination of the pay rolls discloses the fact that 16 or 17 days' work a month constitutes a high average and that many engaged in the minesdecline(the italics are mine) to labor more than 12 or 14 days."
There are two sides to this. The "unwillingness" of the miners to work more than a certain number of days a month is proved to the satisfaction of the commission by an "examination of the pay roll." As a matter of fact in most instances the reason the men do not work more days in a month is due to the system of "crowding" which prevails all over the non-union districts of West Virginia. This is one of the things the miner complains about most bitterly. It is worked in this way: An operation has, say a capacity of 200 men. On the pay roll of that operation may be anywhere from 300 to 400 men. All these men cannot work in the mine at one time, but the company always wants to have plenty of men on hand. So the men are allowed to make but little more than half time. The advantage to the operators is that the more men they have the more cottages they will rent, the more mouths there will be to feed from the company stores, and the more money collected for physicians' fees, insurance and other things for which the miners have to pay. It is absolutely true that the men do not work more than from 12 to 17 days a month, but the pay roll will never tell you the real reason. The men want to work, but they are not permitted to do so.
As to the cabins being above the average—they may be. I went into some of them. I would want a more comfortable stable for my horses. The greater number of the cabins contain four rooms each and are absolutely without any sanitary or other arrangements for the convenience of the occupants. Some few are larger and some are smaller but the four room cabin is the type. They are nearly all alike, built of rough lumber and roofed with a composition roofing such as is bought by the roll. The rental is on the basis of $1.50 per room per month. A four room cabin costs $6 a month, a six room cabin costs $8 or $9. But take the average four room cabin at $6, the yearly rate is $72. That is interest at 6 per cent on $1,200. The labor cost on these houses was not more than $40 each on the average. Including the land on which the houses stand they did not cost the companies more than $300 each. Six per cent on $300 is $18.
Now, the houses are put up as much for the convenience of the companies as for the miners. There would be no coal mined unless the miners had houses in which to live, so a 6 per cent rate on the houses would seem fair. But even allowing 10 per cent, the rate would be $30 instead of $72. At the rentals charged these houses have paid for themselves over and over again and everything the companies get out of them now is pure "velvet." I would call the rental charges exorbitant rather than "slightly excessive" as the commission finds.
As a matter of fact, that Glasscock commission report will not bear close analysis. It is a straddle, made so perhaps in order to protect "the good name of the state." I do not believe that it is accurate in a number of particulars. I do not believe that the average wage of the miners on Paint and Cabin Creeks is between $600 and $700. A good miner will average $2.50 to $3 a day for the days he works. The impression is sought to be created that many of the miners have money in bank. Some of them have, undoubtedly, but they form an exceedingly small percentage of the whole number. I know that as soon as the strike was called the vast majority of the miners and their families had to be supported by the union. I saw wagon loads of provisions sent up to the head of Cabin Creek to feed those who were hungry and who had nothing coming to them according to the books of the companies and who could get nothing at the stores.
As a matter of fact the whole truth has never been told of the real conditions existing in the mines of West Virginia. One of the most illuminating pieces of testimony available to the non-partisan investigator is that of former Governor W. M. O. Dawson. Governor Dawson sent a special message—a rare document and hard to find now—to the legislature of 1907. Three cases of peonage in lumber camps had been called to his attention by Secretary of State Elihu Root at the request of the Italian ambassador. In his message Governor Dawson declared without equivocation that a system of peonage existed under the guard system. One of these cases resulted in what he called a "wanton murder" as a result of a controversy as to whether the murdered man owed $1.50 for the railway fare of his son. The man was killed by a guard. The governor goes on:
"The use of guards in this state is not restricted to cases like these under investigation. They are used at some of the collieries to protect the property of owners, to prevent trespassing, and especially to prevent labor agitators and organizers of the miners' union from gaining access to the miners.... Many outrages have been committed by these guards, many of whom appear to be vicious and dare devil men who seem to aim to add to their viciousness by bulldozing and terrorizing people. It is submitted in all candor that it is not to the best interests of the owners of these collieries to employ such lawless men or to justify the outrageous acts committed by them."In certain parts of the state miners are oppressed and wronged. They are compelled to work in ill-ventilated and otherwise unfit mines. They are cheated in the payment of the compensation for their labor. They work on the condition that they receive so much per ton for the coal mined by them, the coal is not weighed but is calculated by the mine car. These cars, at least in some of the collieries, are rated at a capacity of two and one half tons, whereas they often have a capacity of four tons and in some cases even up to six tons, but the miner is paid for only two and a half tons, for all above that he mines, he gets no pay whatever. This is robbery of the poor and oppression of the weak. At some of the stores conducted by the collieries the miners are charged extortionate prices for merchandise. This is likewise robbery of the poor and oppression of the weak."
"The use of guards in this state is not restricted to cases like these under investigation. They are used at some of the collieries to protect the property of owners, to prevent trespassing, and especially to prevent labor agitators and organizers of the miners' union from gaining access to the miners.... Many outrages have been committed by these guards, many of whom appear to be vicious and dare devil men who seem to aim to add to their viciousness by bulldozing and terrorizing people. It is submitted in all candor that it is not to the best interests of the owners of these collieries to employ such lawless men or to justify the outrageous acts committed by them.
"In certain parts of the state miners are oppressed and wronged. They are compelled to work in ill-ventilated and otherwise unfit mines. They are cheated in the payment of the compensation for their labor. They work on the condition that they receive so much per ton for the coal mined by them, the coal is not weighed but is calculated by the mine car. These cars, at least in some of the collieries, are rated at a capacity of two and one half tons, whereas they often have a capacity of four tons and in some cases even up to six tons, but the miner is paid for only two and a half tons, for all above that he mines, he gets no pay whatever. This is robbery of the poor and oppression of the weak. At some of the stores conducted by the collieries the miners are charged extortionate prices for merchandise. This is likewise robbery of the poor and oppression of the weak."
Mother Jones
The developments of the winter have been under the regime of a third governor, who came to the state house at a season when part of the commonwealth was under martial law. In March came the trials of a number of the strikers and their sympathizers—approximately fifty—by a military court on charges of inciting to riot, conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to destroy property. Among those in prison is Mother Jones, the "Stormy Petrel of Labor" who is always present in big labor disturbances, especially those of the miners and the railroad men. She has given the best part of her life to the cause of laboring men and they adore her.
This old woman, more than 80 years of age, was in the mines when I went there and I gotto know her well. She passed the word along to the men that I was "all right" and reticent as they are to strangers, they told me their side of the case without reservation.
I have been with Mother Jones when she was compelled "to walk the creek," having been forbidden to go upon the footpaths that happened to be upon the property of the companies and denied even the privilege of walking along the railroad track although hundreds of miners and others were walking on it at the time. She was compelled to keep to the county road although it was in the bed of the creek and the water was over her ankles. I protested to the chief of the guards saying that no matter what her attitude might be, no matter how much she might be hated, that she was an old woman and common humanity would dictate that she be not ill treated. I was told that she was an old "she-devil" and that she would receive no "courtesies" there, that she was responsible for all the trouble that had occurred and that she would receive no consideration from the companies.
I was with her when she was denied "the privilege" of going up the foot-way to the house of one of the miners in order to get a cup of tea. It was then afternoon, she had walked several miles and was faint, having had nothing to eat since an early breakfast. But that did not shut her mouth. She made the speech she had arranged to make to the men who had gathered to hear her although they had to line up on each side of the roadway to avoid "obstructing the highway," a highway that was almost impassable to a wheeled vehicle and on which there was no travel. And in that speech she counseled moderation, told the men to keep strictly within the law and to protect the company's property instead of doing anything to injure it.
I had several long talks with her. When she speaks to the miners she talks in their own vernacular and occasionally swears. She was a normal school teacher in her early days, and in her talks with me in the home of one of her friends in the "free town" of Eskdale, she used the language of the cultured woman. And this is the old woman whom nearly all the operators in the non-union fields fear, and whose coming among their workers they dread more than the coming of a pestilence. They now have her safely in jail.
When I left the field[11]the conflict was still on. It seemed likely to continue until one side or the other gave in. The presence of the military could only bring about a peace that is temporary. Having held out through the winter, the miners were preparing to hold out through the spring and summer and autumn if necessary, and the United Mine Workers of America were preparing to back them up with all the resources of the national organization.